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Category: Tucson

I do not typically desire August above any other month. The weather is usually too harsh for me to consider it to be better than May or October. But I did not want it to evaporate altogether, which it seems to have done.

Where is August?

Maybe because I ignored it, it went away.

I walked most every morning, usually twice, but always trying to avoid August.

My first walks were just for me, by myself with the camera, very early before the August heat. The dog walks would come second, and I had to make sure to be done by seven thirty, or August would show up.

Walking with my camera, before August and the dog knew that I was awake, I met a javelina and babies crossing the road in front of me. I got a picture in the darkness of the early morning.

The monsoon season this year during August was very tame but plentiful.

I wanted to tell you all about the great, evenly spaced rain we were getting, but I was just a little superstitious about jinxing it and having it go away. I know it works like that, if I run outside into the thick August humidity, dodging the big ploppy first drops of a rain storm to roll up my truck windows. It makes the rain stop immediately.

Maybe I kept August to myself too much, and I lost it for the hiding.

Our skies haven’t been as blazing and dramatic this year during the monsoon season, with thunderheads and dynamic sunsets, or red and metallic sunrises that scream of the days heat to come. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take a million pictures and post them, to give me some reminder that August was passing by.

Maybe I didn’t brag on August enough, and it went away.

Where did August go?

The August landscape was green, and the prickly pear cactus were full to bursting. The plants that a few years ago were crispy dry and dying in the washes were again plump and delicious looking. It’s because of August, but now that August is gone, I can’t say thank you out loud, and have anything but September hear it.

I kept making observations to myself, about things that I felt were different this year, August, but they were such subtle differences. I wasn’t sure if it was just my noticing, so I never said it out loud to August.

There were more rabbits, fewer vultures. More road runners, fewer mockingbirds. More coyotes, fewer javelina.

.My father had a birthday that shows him to be 87. I know he wonders where August has gotten to.

Five years ago in the first week of August, I quit smoking for what I hope is the last time. The date came and went without me noticing.

August 24th arrived, and I briefly recalled that fourteen years earlier on that date, I drove into Tucson to begin another chapter of my life. How is it possible that fourteen years are gone? Someone has been stealing Augusts for a while now, it seems.

Hurricane Gustav kissed New Orleans, where the bite of Katrina still showed. That was three Augusts ago.

I watched history being made during August. Michael Phelps and Barak Obama broke through. August should be proud, and I want to tell it.